Sources and themes in the art of Obiora Udechukwu.

   Me to the orangery
   solitude invites,
   a wagtail, to tell
   the tangled-wood-tale;
   a sunbird, to mourn
   a mother on a spray.

Christopher Okigbo, "The Passage," from Heavensgate (in Okigbo 1971:4)

Obiora Udechukwu belongs to the generation of artists influenced by Uche Okeke, Bruce Onobrakpeya, and Solomon Irein Wangboje, who forged a strong base for contemporary Nigerian art. Now one of Nigeria's most distinguished artists, he is becoming familiar outside Nigeria, particularly in Germany and the United States.

As a youth Udechukwu developed two identities, urban and rural. He was born in 1946 in the large Igbo trading center of Onitsha on the Niger River, where he attended primary and secondary school. His life and art are associated not only with Igbo culture but also with Onitsha. This city has for many years been a cosmopolitan cultural center, having given birth to other prominent Nigerian artists, particularly Ben Enwonwu and Uzo Egonu, and famous politicians such as Nnamdi Azikiwe. While Udechukwu's background was middle-class, Onitsha was not a city where he was isolated from diverse elements of society--laborers, beggars, members of the city's Muslim minority, the elite. Udechukwu was curious about a variety of peoples, and in addition to creating conventional still lifes, nature scenes, and self-portraits, he depicted ordinary persons in everyday situations in sympathetic terms. He has created such images throughout his career (Fig. 1), whereas over time images of the rich and powerful have been increasingly portrayed in the negative.

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The other major aspect of Udechukwu's early experience is that his parents came from the rural community of Agulu, a short distance from Onitsha. Agulu was more typical of Igbo life, for most Igbos did not live in large urban centers when Udechukwu was young. His parents had a second home there, where relatives still lived (a brother of his father was at one time Igwe, or Chief of Agulu), and he often visited. Throughout Udechukwu's artistic career, both modern urban life and village Igbo culture have figured in his art--his creations moving back and forth between them, and at times blending the two.

Udechukwu became interested in art as a career in his last two years of secondary school, toward the end of British colonial rule in Nigeria in the late 1950s. At the time, many Nigerian parents wished their sons to train as physicians, engineers, or lawyers (the latter profession sometimes leading to politics). Contemporary art, a scarcely recognized field then, offered few prospects for teaching and design posts. Udechukwu was fortunate in having parents who did not discourage him. He says:

   At the point [that] I decided to go into art, my father had died. And my
   mother had no problem at all supporting whatever I wanted for myself. My
   father was a collector of art. He had works from popular artists in
   Onitsha--sculpture and painting--so I believe that I would not have had any
   problems with him ...

(interview by the author, 1994) (1)

Udechukwu had an encouraging art teacher in primary school in Onitsha, Joseph Eze, and an inspiring one at the secondary level Rowland Ndefo (2)--lucky for him, since at that time very few Nigerian schools had art teachers at all only the occasional untrained craft teacher. Of Ndefo's classes Udechukwu has said: "It was mainly still-life drawing and painting and things like that. So basically, realistic painting, drawing, and designing ... the English tradition ..." (interview, 1994).

Graduating from secondary school in late 1964, the young man taught at St. John's School in Onitsha from February to April 1965. From May through August of that year he was an Assistant Commercial Artist at the Ministry of Agriculture in Enugu, then the capital of Eastern Nigeria. There he met his future teacher, Uche Okeke, and others at the Mbari Centre that Okeke was involved in. Udechukwu was impressed by Okeke's mature attitude toward his work as an artist and by his art--particularly his paintings, such as the large Fabled Brute hanging in Okeke's living room. He was also impressed that Okeke was making a living without teaching at a school. "When I saw that somebody could also stay on his own as a painter," he said to me, "that was the final point in deciding to opt for not just art but for painting" (interview, 1994).

Udechukwu's goal of becoming a professional artist was also stimulated through contacts with other Nigerian visual artists, poets, dramatists, and musicians whose work differed from what he had previously encountered. He later told Ulli Beier that "for the first time I saw art that was different from the conventional art I had been taught to do. I was quite excited by Uche Okeke's own drawings; I joined Mbari and met all the other artists there" (Beier 1981:53-54).

The Arts in Nigeria: From Independence Through the Civil War

Artistic activities at Enugu formed part of the early post-1960 independence developments in the country. There was the growing local and international popularity of Nigerian novelists, poets, dramatists, literary critics, and musicians, architects, and scholars. Interesting collaborations took place among those in the literary performing, and visual arts, particularly in southern Nigeria. It was a time of excitement at the new Nigerian universities and among a whole generation of university-educated persons and their teachers. Much of this cultural ferment was a reaction to colonialism, as Nigerians were rediscovering their own cultures, their history, and forming a sense of their national identity. It was also the consequence of a growing corpus of intellectuals finally working and teaching in the country. It is not surprising that in this environment during his early years as an artist, Udechukwu tried many things, writing dramas and poetry, taking part in designing stage settings, and creating visual art as well.

In 1965-66 Udechukwu spent his first year at Ahmadu Bello University at Zaria in northern Nigeria, where an earlier generation of contemporary Nigerian artists, including Uche Okeke, had trained. It was the best art school in the country at the time. There was only one Nigerian on the staff, at a junior level; the remainder of his teachers were nearly all English. The artist told Ulli Beier about that period: "I think I learned how to draw in the conventional manner; I mean drawing from nature and putting down what is before you accurately" (Beier 1981:54). He did so while living in a physical landscape different from that of eastern Nigeria, yet one which did not later influence his art. "At that point in time," he said, "there was [a new move to basic design courses], so one can see that as a movement away from the previous Zaria system of just academy painting; there was more experimentation" (interview, 1994).

The exciting cultural developments in Nigeria were interrupted by a dark period which was to shape Udechukwu's art and poetry. Beginning in 1966 there were pogroms by Hausa and Fulani in northern Nigeria against Nigerians who had moved there for work from the more developed south. The attacks, which resulted in many deaths, were in part a reaction to a coup at the federal level involving Igbo military officers, and in part to resentment at southerners taking jobs in the north. They were largely aimed at Igbos who resided in the north in substantial numbers. Most fled to Igboland, receiving little assistance from the federal government. Much of that area broke away from Nigeria and declared itself the country of Biafra. The civil war that ensued (1967-1970) was fought mostly in Igboland, which was blockaded amid great physical destruction and human misery. When it ended in Biafra's defeat, most of the countryside lay in ruins.

Udechukwu, in the army on the Biafran side, served in propaganda units, working collaboratively with other artists, musicians, dramatists, and poets to put on events for soldiers and refugees and creating war posters, strip cartoons, and other visual materials to strengthen the Biafrans' will. It was a strangely stimulating artistic time in the midst of terrible destruction as the federal troops gradually closed in and the artists fled from place to place. Oddly enough, like Udechukwu, most of them had been largely brought up in towns and cities, so during this period they had more contact with Igbo village culture than they had ever had before.

This experience reinforced Udechukwu's growing curiosity about Igbo life, evidenced in the collection of Igbo proverbs he made at the time. He saw much privation and himself suffered from hunger and the hardship of forced movement, but he also created his own art, mostly war images, as did other artists. Among them are a series of oils (Ottenberg 1997: figs. 74-77, 87) in strong colors--reds, blues, and yellows (Fig. 3)--whose subjects include starving figures, a mother wailing over her dead child, refugees solemnly walking in a war-torn landscape, a man holding his head with his hands in despair, and a scene of utter physical desolation with no figures at all. For many years afterward Udechukwu continued to depict images drawn from the conflict. For example, the Harsh Flute Series, in ink on paper, was created in 1989. A dramatic visual account of the Biafran side of the war from just before its commencement to its aftermath, it exhibits the artist's considerable drawing skills (Fig. 4).

[FIGURES 3-4 OMITTED]

Before the conflict, Udechukwu and other Igbo artists had created pleasant pictures of local rural and urban scenes, traditional cultural events and rituals such as masquerades, still lifes, and portraits of persons and animals--forms often referred to as genre art. The war ended much of this art. They had seen too much destruction, famine, and death. For Udechukwu, his earlier interest in everyday life, largely growing out of his Onitsha childhood, was reinforced by the war experience. This interest is visible in his art and poetry to this day. It is expressed in concern over the destructive behavior of Nigeria's military leaders, the waste of the country's rich resources, the plight of ordinary people, the lack of basic amenities such as clean water, and the extent of poverty (Udechukwu 1981a, 1985, 1990). From wartime on, Udechukwu developed these strong social messages in his art. Ironically, he did so while employing visually enjoyable traditional Igbo motifs and styles. The result was powerful social commentary on current Nigerian life. Yet at times he has returned to the earlier, more fully pleasing style, particularly in landscapes.

Postwar Influences: The Revival of Igbo Culture

Udechukwu had left Ahmadu Bello University in 1966 as a result of the pogroms. He took his second year in Igbo country at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, (3) after which war broke out. When it ended in 1970, he continued art training until 1977 at Nsukka with a largely new group of teachers, receiving his B.A. and M.F.A. degrees. He never returned to Nigeria's north for further training.

Udechukwu studied art with and was much influenced by Uche Okeke, then head of the art department at Nsukka, whose own creations relied heavily on drawing skills and whose content was based largely on Igbo culture, particularly female body and wall painting called uli (Fig. 5), and on Igbo tales, ceremonies, and beliefs (U. Okeke 1961, 1971; Udechukwu 1984). The revival of interest in uli through contemporary art had begun with Okeke in the 1960s, when Nigeria's independence produced a growing sense of freedom from colonial restraints on cultural tradition. It fully developed among teachers and students in the 1970s at the University in Nsukka and was linked to renewed interest in Igbo culture after the destructive Biafran War. At Nsukka, through Okeke and his own uli researches, (4) Udechukwu learned of the rich aesthetics of uli and its symbolism, the importance of drawing, the skillful use of the two-dimensional surface.

[FIGURE 5 OMITTED]

Traditional uli motifs, now rarely painted on human bodies (Fig. 6) or walls (Fig. 8), have a strong linear, often curvilinear, quality. The art makes use of contrasts between positive and negative space, its images at times appearing as sky constellations. Udechukwu considers uli to have lyrical qualities expressing brevity--a parsimony of depiction (Udechukwu 1972, 1980). It is art that has often been produced spontaneously, as in the case of some of Udechukwu's creations. He has said that "for me, uli is my heritage" (interview, 1994). Uli motifs generally refer to images of everyday Igbo life--farm and cooking tools, pots, plants, birds, animals, the sun, the moon, and the kola nut, though some are pure design (Fig. 7). For ceremonial occasions and important events, skilled Igbo female artists painted uli to add beauty to the human body and the walls of buildings and compounds, not to create other specific messages. Udechukwu's interest, and that of Okeke and other male and some female artists, mostly Igbo, (5) called attention to a dying art tradition. By placing uli in modern social settings--on sculptural surfaces and on paper, board, and canvas, framed and hung on walls in homes, institutions, and galleries--they helped revive it.

[FIGURES 6-8 OMITTED]

Uli focused Udechukwu's interest on line and on spontaneity. He wrote (1980:45-46):

   Line, which is an extended dot or a moving point, has very many
   possibilities, particularly, the quickly drawn one. My drawing explores the
   evocative and lyrical possibilities of line and derives from Uli. The Uli
   artist works spontaneously whether on the human body or the wall. There is
   no question of erasing or cleaning. There is something about the
   spontaneously executed work, a breathtaking vitality and freshness that
   defies description or repetition.

   And again (Udechukwu 1980:44):

   An analysis of Igbo drawing and painting reveals that space, line pattern,
   brevity and spontaneity seem to be the pillars on which the whole tradition
   rests. It is these same qualifies that I strive [for], both intuitively,
   and intellectually to assimilate in my work. Intuitively, because during
   these years of studying and looking at Igbo drawing and painting, various
   aspects of design and recurrent motifs have become internalized in my
   system and inevitably surface unconsciously in the course of executing my
   aesthetic problems. It is perhaps needless to add that the great works of
   art result from the judicious marriage of intellect and intuition.

Regarding his use of extensive negative space in his work, Udechukwu writes of "the ingenious exploitation of large negative areas in a picture in such a way, for instance, that with the strategic deployment of just a few motifs, the picture looks right and the large spaces provide the areas of rest for the eye while at the same time emphasizing or delimiting the motifs. This is one of the `tricks' of the Igbo muralist that I try to use in my own work" (Udechukwu 1980:44).

It was logical that Udechukwu should have taught at Nsukka, first as a graduate student and later as regular staff, from 1973 to 1997. Only a few extremely well-established Nigerian artists at the time and even today--for example Ben Enwonwu and Bruce Onobrakpeya--have been able to live solely through selling their art; most teach at a university or college. Udechukwu, being committed to the cause of contemporary Nigerian art, and employing a well-developed version of ulism, has been willing and anxious to train and encourage artists and art historians. This contemporary scene relies heavily on European forms of media, though its content generally derives from indigenous Nigerian cultures, and the country's (and Africa's) difficult social, political, and economic problems. He has had many students, including Tayo Adenaike, Chinwe Uwatse, Chika Okeke, and Marcia Kure, some of whom continue his artistic conceptions.

In southeastern Nigeria the postwar 1970s, when Udechukwu became fully trained, was a period of re-creating traditional Igbo art in its numerous sculptural traditions, masquerades, and rites. (6) It was also a time when Udechukwu and other young contemporary artists, largely working in European media, came to flourish in the Igbo region, especially in the Nsukka art-training program. The developing contemporary art drew on tradition, wartime experience, and postwar Nigerian life.

Udechukwu, as we have noted, had been part of the cultural activity of the 1960s following independence. Now there was another time of artistic growth in Igboland, though for different reasons.

The emergence of uli on the contemporary art scene was a way of looking forward by looking back to earlier traditions. (7)

The revival of Igbo culture was really twofold, for it had been damaged not only by the war but also by the colonial period and its aftereffects. Udechukwu wrote (1980:43-44):

   In a country like Nigeria which experienced the cultural estrangement and
   emasculation that is part of colonialism it becomes imperative for the
   creative artist to launch an intellectual and revolutionary war against the
   vestiges of the colonial past. In order to regain his identity and with it
   self-confidence, he has to return to his roots, study and draw sustenance
   from it, for before being a modern man, he is an African, a Nigerian, an
   Igbo. The revitalizing effect of this recourse to roots has been recognized
   by important artists and intellectuals.

At Nsukka Udechukwu's art was subject to a number of other influences. Nigerian writers had emerged into prominence, their works becoming popular in schools and abroad--including the Igbo novelist-poet Chinua Achebe, the Yoruba dramatist-poet Wole Soyinka (who later received the Nobel Prize in literature), Cyprian Ekwensi, and Flora Nwapa. Udechukwu was particularly influenced by the Igbo poet Christopher Okigbo (Fig. 9), killed in 1967 in the Biafran War. Udechukwu had first discovered Ogikbo's first collection, Heavensgate, in his 1960s Enugu days (see also Okigbo 1971; Udechukwu 1975, 1984). Okigbo's poetry was complex and dense, containing references to traditional culture and also to classical European and Western literature. (8) In my 1994 interview, Udechukwu told me:

[FIGURE 9 OMITTED]

   Our training in secondary [school] was in the romantic poets of England and
   Europe, not the moderns, and Okigbo's poetry was completely modern. And
   even though I had no experience of modern poetry he spoke to me directly.
   The music, everything about it. And of course, the concern with the dilemma
   of the contemporary African intellectual, his relationships to his
   tradition ..."

Okigbo's writings also inspired Udechukwu to become the excellent poet that he is today, though his work differs from Okigbo's; it is less complex, with fewer references to European traditions, more likely to be directly concerned with social and political problems in Nigeria, a concern often expressed in a bitter satiric manner. Some of his visual art has Okigbo's poetic and lyrical qualities and complexity of interpretation, and at times there are close associations between his poetry and visual art. (9) Udechukwu's drawings and paintings mirror some of the allusions and ironies of Okigbo's poems. The artist also has a long-standing interest in traditional Igbo poet-singers, or minstrels, who accompany themselves on the ubo--the Igbo-style mbira, or thumb piano. These minstrels' long poetic tales or myths are depicted in a number of Udechukwu's works.

Since 1977 Udechukwu has increasingly employed a second indigenous motif system, nsibidi (Battestini 1991; Campbell 1983; Ottenberg 1997:125-29, fn. 2; Thompson 1982), which came to the southern and southeastern Igbo in precolonial times from the non-Igbo Ejagham east of the Cross River (Fig. 10). Nsibidi is associated with men's secret societies, the motifs appearing on cloths, walls, and ritual artifacts; some motifs can even be signed with arm and hand motions. Unlike uli, nsibidi generally carry secret meanings, even when they are publicly viewed, though some are known to Udechukwu, other artists, scholars, and some women.

[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]

Udechukwu is interested in nsibidi because of its aesthetics and because nsibidi motifs express aspects of human relationships more than most uli--such as love, marriage, divorce, disagreement, and family. (10) Sometimes the artist combines uli and nsibidi in one work, as in Writing in the Sky (silkscreen, 1989). At other times they appear separately, as in Isinwaoji (kola-nut head, acrylic, 1989), named after a favorite uli motif Of Udechukwu's, or in People of the Night (lithograph, 1988), in which the image of the nsibidi mirror, roughly representing truth, is evident. (11) Even when his art contains nsibidi motifs, they are often surrounded by the linear, lyrical style of uli, and Udechukwu rarely uses an nsibidi motif as the major image. (12) As in the case of uli, he sometimes modifies or plays with nsibidi.

Udechukwu has also been influenced by art from other regions of the world. He became interested in Chinese calligraphic ink drawings that he calls Chinese Li. He saw them at Nsukka in 1975-77, and during a 1976 trip to Europe and the United States, where they were exhibited in several museums (Fig. 11). (13) Li is similar to uli in some ways: both are characterized by the importance of positive and negative space, linearity, two-dimensionality, a close relationship to poetry (with poems sometimes brushed onto the work itself), abstraction from full images, strong spiritual qualities, and a concern with nature. It is uncertain if Li art truly influenced Udechukwu's style or if he was mainly encouraged to continue in the direction he was moving, discovering that other artists far away in distance and time had been working in similar ways.

[FIGURE 11 OMITTED]

Another influence on Udechukwu has been Ibrahim el Salahi of Sudan, (14) whose art has often employed lines and designs derived from Arabic calligraphy. Udechukwu first encountered this artist's work sometime after Salahi's 1962 exhibition at the Mbari Centre in Ibadan, through a Nigerian publication on his black-and-white ink drawings (Fig. 12) (Beier 1962). Again, it is uncertain whether Udechukwu modified his style after becoming aware of Salahi's work or simply was encouraged to discover another contemporary artist from a very different area of Africa working along similar stylistic lines. (15)

[FIGURE 12 OMITTED]

Udechukwu finds a place for diverse influences in his art: sign-related forms such as Chinese Li, Arabic calligraphy and Salahi's art, uli and nsibidi; literary forms such as poetry and the tales of Igbo minstrels. His emphasis on two-dimensional art coincides with a growing interest among Africanist art historians in African painting on walls, the body; and elsewhere, which has been long neglected in contrast to sculpture. As Udechukwu has said, "If tomorrow somebody encounters you and says African art is all sculpture, you can say no, it is not all sculpture; we have paintings, we have drawings, we have writing" (interview, 1994).

The Social Critic

Udechukwu's interests broadened as his art matured after the war. Without ever giving up his interest in Igbo art styles and the lives of Igbo people, he also became concerned in his work with social, political, and economic problems in all of Nigeria, and at times Africa. These tendencies continue today. The war and the difficult reconstruction period afterward in Igbo country helped develop a sense of righteousness in Udechukwu, which has become quite evident in some of his art. For example, his Two Guards of Honour (Fig. 13) appeared on the front cover of the artist's exhibition catalogue No Water in 1981. This was a solo exhibition largely devoted to the question of why, in a country supposedly as rich as Nigeria, there is little or no water for some, and no potable water for many. The ink drawing shows an exasperated face looking on while at the lower left a long line of empty pails (only partially shown in this detail of the larger work) leads up to a tap with no water flowing from it. The style of this work, like some others by Udechukwu, borders on that of a cartoon--a subject in which he has shown some interest (Udechukwu 1979)---but its technical skill and inventiveness place it clearly within the realm of satiric art.

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The figure of a military officer in What the Serpent Did Not Say (Fig. 14) stands for the political leadership in Nigeria, which Udechukwu sees as a major cause of the failure of the country to develop. This figure is equated with the serpent surrounding him; his mouth is absent, as if the leader has no comment on the disastrous conditions in Nigeria. The work is from another of Udechukwu's solo exhibitions, "What the Madman Said" (Udechukwu 1990), consisting of satiric commentary in the form of ink drawings and poems. Udechukwu here becomes the madman, for it is only he who can say such outrageous things in a country where those holding divergent views have been punished, and it is the madman who sometimes says the wisest things. As he told interviewers for The Muse (Azuah et al. 1993:22), he uses "the madman as a means of talking about issues that society refuses to hear."

[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]

The interactions in Nigeria among people working in fields such as poetry, visual art, drama, and music continued into the 1980s. Gradually, however, the mismanagement and greed of successive Nigerian military dictatorships led to attrition at the universities and to general economic decline; some writers and scholars left for Europe and America, though others stayed behind, as Udechukwu did for many years. The government never took kindly to the fact that the country's universities were centers of resistance to military dictatorship. Though the possibilities of artistic cooperation decreased as resources evaporated, Udechukwu and other Nigerian artists continued to teach, create, and cooperate with one another under worsening conditions of low pay, poor communication facilities, and difficulties of travel. But contemporary art did not die. The Nsukka art program, as well as a few others in the country, continued to develop, benefitting from more art students, a generally better public attitude toward the visual arts, and the patronage of some wealthy Nigerians. In these activities Udechukwu played an important role.

Exploring Media and Techniques

In the 1970s and 1980s the artist experimented a great deal with uli and nsibidi styles, playing with and modifying them, attracted more and more by nsibidi. He became interested in color for its own aesthetic sake, moved toward acrylic as a medium, and began to employ sgraffito--scratching parallel wavy lines or even uli motifs with a fork or a single-blade instrument on wet acrylic or other media. Rather than just focusing on uli motifs themselves, he has shown interest in recent years in the swirls and loops of the colored backgrounds against which the wall uli is placed; these faint underlying patterns are often made with the fingers, a sponge, or vegetable material. Similarly, body uli is placed on skin prepared with natural substances. The artist noted the parallel (interview, 1984):

   I think the main thing which interests me in this experiment now is the
   texture which one sees in uli wall painting. The background texture is like
   a geometrical monochromatic pattern which provides the background on which
   the painting or the motifs are the situation. The same thing happens with
   the uli body decoration.

Udechukwu's inquisitiveness in drawing from traditional Igbo culture, becoming familiar with aspects he did not learn as a child, is matched by his interest in the potential of various art media, how they are best suited to explore Igbo culture and current Nigerian life. He creates in a wide variety of media: pencil pen, brush and wash in ink, (16) charcoal, gouache, pastel watercolor, oil, acrylic, and combinations of these. He uses an array of printing techniques--wood block, linocut, lithograph, drypoint, etching, silkscreen, and aquatint--and has experimented with specific images in different media. Never a serious sculptor, his concern is with two-dimensional art. While depth is not lacking in some of his drawings and paintings, much of his art does not stress it.

What it does stress, as in Christopher Okigbo's poetry, is complexity emotional diversity and ambiguity, with sweeping lines balanced by sections of small detail and empty spaces. His art is not always easy to "read" (especially for someone unfamiliar with Nigerian social life, Igbo culture, uli, and nsibidi symbolism); yet it still can be appreciated by viewers since it often deals with panhuman issues of suffering and domination, and much of it is technically superb.

Udechukwu has emphasized the idea of essence in his art. He writes (1980:43):

   The primary premise is that everything has an essence, something that
   distinguishes it, that carries its mark of particularity. If an artist is
   able to capture this essence, that is to abstract the sign of the object
   stripped of all unnecessary details and paraphernalia, the "soul" of the
   object is deemed to have been arrested and impressed permanently on the two
   dimensional surface. My ultimate goal, therefore is to be able to develop
   clarity of vision accompanied inevitably by a certain lucidity of
   expression arrived from or structured on the above postulate.

Indeed, the lines of his drawings are often minimal and suggestive, forcing the viewer to focus on the object to imagine the undrawn lines; their very suggestiveness creates essence.

The artist has never hesitated to alter natural proportions and to move away from mimetic art: "A dichotomy between the forms of nature and those of art is assumed throughout. That a bucket is smaller than a human being is irrelevant in my practice. If a picture would be more effective with the bucket represented as bigger than a man, I would do just that" (Udechukwu 1980:46). As his former student, Chika Okeke, observes: "While as a young student, Udechukwu's painting displayed the usual stylistic influences of European modernism that recalls, especially in his landscapes, the Impressionist pictures of Alfred Sisley." After his art matured, however, "he did not seek modernist legitimacy by pandering to Western aesthetics" (C. Okeke 1999:271,273), but drew from non-Western sources as discussed above.

Yet Udechukwu lives in a Western world as well as Igbo, Nigerian, and African ones. At the time of writing this he is teaching at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, and he has spent periods of time in Germany. He exhibits in modern galleries, largely writes in English (there are a few Igbo-language publications), and employs Western media. According to Chika Okeke (1999:282):

   In his paintings can be ciphered the harmonious result of the meeting of
   two [or] more cultures on the one hand, and two contextually separate but
   linked historical times on the other. The much discussed identity crisis
   for the modern African artist seems to be irrelevant in the art of
   Udechukwu as it is for many other African artists. His art is modern and
   African in a resolved way.

New Interests and Experiences

The last ten years have been extremely difficult for many individuals living in Nigeria, as public institutions, education, and the economy continue to decline. The two faces in Udechukwu's Faces of the Times (Fig. 15) suggest a weariness at having to cope with these problems; they are pressed down by the black mass above them, which has the appearance of a snake. In the left eye of the left face, which appears to be male, is a reflection of the looming head of the ever-present Nigerian military officer with a beret. In the right eye, ordinary people stand aimlessly, clearly unfulfilled. In the face at right, apparently of a woman, a number of nsibidi and uli motifs below her left eye suggest a life of varied experiences. The uli half-kola-nut motif appears above her head at right, a sign of being Igbo and of a hope for peaceful relations. We see how diverse the elements are in a single work by Udechukwu, and how wide are the possibilities of interpretation.

[FIGURE 15 OMITTED]

Udechukwu himself was not unaffected by conditions in Nigeria. He spent fourteen days in the Nsukka prison in 1997 on dubious charges. His creative work was constantly interrupted in the effort to maintain and expand contemporary artistic activities and institutions in the face of the country's problems and a general sapping of energy and initiative. He was involved in developing new art groups such as the Aka Circle of Exhibiting Artists? in organizing art conferences, in evaluating the work of young artists for prizes, and in organizing exhibitions of his and other artists' work. He is a frequent exhibitor in a country where much of the work of preparing a show is done by the artists themselves.

Udechukwu has also been active as an art critic. There are few skilled professionals in this area in Nigeria. Those who write reviews in the country's newspapers and magazines are often ill-prepared to do so, a fact that he has lamented (Udechukwu 1978, 1995). Consequently artists often review and evaluate one another's work; they are some of Nigeria's best art critics. Udechukwu shows skill at this, and the activity has provided him opportunities to reflect on the work of others in terms of his own.

Increasing connections with Germany in the 1980s and 1990s gave the artist time to create away from Nigerian distractions. (18) During the resulting bursts of activity, he experimented with acrylics, played with sgraffito and language, and painted on larger canvases. His art became increasingly abstract and philosophical (Aas 1994; C. Okeke 1998, 1999:276), and less directly political, less absorbed in Nigerian life and problems. In his acrylic In the Beginning (Fig. 16), we see him using strong and sharply delineated colors. Some might say that this painting could have been created by a number of European painters, but Udechukwu does not appear, on the surface, to have been much influenced by German art of any era as a result of his trips there. Except for his more abstract work, he has largely concentrated on images from his Nigerian background and experience. In fact, over time he has given this same title to a number of works, created in different media and different styles, without giving specific meaning to them. It could refer, in the case of this painting, to the beginning of the world and time, the beginning of a new phase in his own career, a sense of hope for a new beginning for his country, or some deeply philosophical and poetic idea.

[FIGURE 16 OMITTED]

Ugulu (Harmattan) (Fig. 17) is one of a series of three paintings, each representing a Nigerian season. During the harmattan, a cool, dusty wind from the Sahara grays the skies. This work conveys a sense of elements whirling about with the wind, much as in his In the Beginning; the artist makes good use of sgraffito to create additional designs. Unusual for his acrylic paintings, this work has little color contrast.

[FIGURE 17 OMITTED]

Udechukwu is not specific about art influences from Europe or America, though he has written me that "the artist is influenced by the totality of sense impressions he has been exposed to. Detective criticism is an onerous task ..." (personal communication, 1994). My impression is that contemporary Nigerian artists rarely claim to have been affected by Western art influences, perhaps not wishing their work to be criticized as derivative. They stress its stylistic and thematic originality within the Nigerian scene, while conceding that the media employed are generally Western.

Although not postmodern in the usual meaning of this term, Udechukwu's art, like that of many other artists, displays multiculturalism and hybridity, and he has made a few moves toward postmodernism. For the Configura 2 workshop in Erfurt, Germany, in 1995, he chose to create House of Four Trees--a replica, with innovations, of an Igbo meeting-house (Fig. 18). At Dartmouth College in 1998, Udechukwu, Chika Okeke, and five Dartmouth students developed another three-dimensional structure, The House of Truth. (18) In 1989 at Iwalewa-Haus he created three innovative uli panels for an exhibition (Fig. 19).

[FIGURES 18-19 OMITTED]

Since moving to St. Lawrence University in 1997, Udechukwu has been filling his art with writing and related images, much of it referring to Nigeria--as if living and creating away from Nsukka has caused him to reflect deeply on that country, on his travels to the United States, and on living in a small town in upstate New York. (19) It is mostly small writing in Igbo or English, in pencil or ink, drawn from Nigerian poets, novelists, politicians, his own poetry, and personal musings, with words that are often much repeated on works in rich, dark colors. He seems to be painting and writing in a dreamlike manner.

Udechukwu had occasionally incorporated writing into his work before coming to the United States, but it clearly has become a major preoccupation, linked to his prison experience, his necessary departure from Nigeria and his living in the United States, and perhaps also to uli and nsibidi as indigenous sign forms. The writing occurs within works still generally based on the uli style, and some of them include specific uli or nsibidi motifs (Figs. 2, 20). Language and language-like forms are crucial to Udechukwu's art and life. It is as if he is searching, through image and word, to relocate himself, his culture, and his country in creative ways by drawing together past skills from the visual and the literary worlds.

[FIGURES 2, 20 OMITTED]

Obiora Udechukwu is a visual artist, poet, art teacher and critic, art organizer, social commentator, and satirist. (20) In addition to his paintings and drawings, one of his greatest contributions is that he has helped to develop contemporary art in Nigeria and to call attention to values in African life that remain relevant today.

[This article was accepted for publication in June 2000.]

This paper is a revision of a talk presented at the Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, on November 2, 1998. I wish to thank Obiora Udechukwu, Olu Oguibe, and Chika Okeke for helpful comments on early drafts of this paper.

(1.) I videotaped my interview with the artist in his study at Nsukka on June 4, 1994. Further quotations in this article are also drawn from that occasion.

(2.) Ndefo, the most influential secondary-school art teacher of his day, worked part-time at a number of schools in the Onitsha region. He also taught the artists Okechukwu Odita, Oseloka Osadebe, Chukwuanugo Okeke, Benjo Igwilo, and Paul Igboanugo (Ottenberg, forthcoming).

(3.) Not to be confused with the University of Nigeria, Enugu.

(4.) Although Udechukwu had seen body and wall uli as a youngster in his home town of Agulu, he had not paid attention to it, perhaps because his art training at that time was not in indigenous art forms to any extent, perhaps because he was living in urban Onitsha. His initial scholarly contact with uli occurred in 1966, during his first year as an art student at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, when he wrote a term paper for the Humanities General Studies course. "So, for the first time, I went to the village [Agulu, his own] and took color photographs of wall paintings and spoke to the artists and came back and wrote the essay. By that time I did not even know that Uche Okeke's drawings, which I had seen, were influenced by those paintings" (Beier 1981:56). He had seen Okeke's drawings at the Mbari Centre in Enugu. In 1972 he wrote his B.A. thesis on uli from Agulu (Udechukwu 1972).

(5.) Among important non-Igbo artists who have drawn upon uli are the sculptor El Anatsui, originally from Ghana, where he trained, but who now teaches at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; and the watercolorist Tayo Adenaike of Yoruba background, who studied with Udechukwu at Nsukka.

(6.) Some art forms and performances did not survive the war. Most Igbo traditional art was destroyed or seized by federal troops, and important rituals could not be held nor customs followed during the war.

(7.) Though Uche Okeke had actually begun the uli and Igbo modern art movement before the war, it was only after the war, when he became head of the art department at Nsukka, that uli developed its contemporary style through his influence on other emerging artists.

(8.) Udechukwu told Ulli Beier that Okigbo's poetry "was very lyrical even if you did not quite understand what he was saying" (Azuah et al. 1993:21)

(9.) See, for example, Udechukwu 1975, 1990, in which drawings and poems occur together. At other times the artist has used titles derived from the poetry of Okigbo and other Nigerians.

(10.) Former students of Udechukwu, particularly Tayo Adenaike, Chika Okeke, and Marcia Kure, have also made use of nsibidi.

(11.) This motif, a vertical rectangle intersected in the center by a horizontal and a vertical line, bears some resemblance to the wood-framed mirror found in Nigeria. See Ottenberg 1997: fig. 86 for Writing in the Sky; fig. 102 a, c, for Isinwaoji; fig, 80 for People of the Night.

(12.) But see his Mirror, Mirror (ink drawing, 1989) in Ottenberg 1997: fig. 79, and on the front cover of Udechukwu 1990, where the nsibidi mirror motif is the dominant image.

(13.) Udechukwu 1981b. For background on Li art see Rowley 1959, especially pp. 35-36; and Hay 1939. The last two citations were kindly furnished by Jerome Silbergeld.

(14.) Also known as Ibrahim el Salahi. See Beier 1961, 1962, 1983, 1990; Hassan 1998; Kennedy 1992: 09.-113.

(15.) C. Okeke (1999:290) makes a further suggestion, that Udechukwu's art was influenced by contemporary Australian Aboriginal painting, which Udechukwu saw in Europe. Much of the Nigerian's work has a similar linear quality and use of motifs.

(16.) He has illustrated numerous books and journals; his pen-and-ink and brush work is ideally suited to the printed form.

(17.) Originally composed of thirteen eastern Nigerian artists. See their annual exhibition catalogues since 1986, except for 1998.

(18.) He has worked particularly but not exclusively with Iwalewa-Haus, University of Bayreuth, and with Ulli Beier and Norbert Aas in that city.

(18.) For House of Four Trees see Configura 2 1995; C. Okeke 1998:47-48; Ottenberg 1997:147, 159, 153. For The House of Truth see C. Okeke 1998:48-49.

(19.) For a more detailed analysis of Udechukwu's art since going to St. Lawrence University, see C. Okeke 1998; Aas 1999.

(20.) Useful sources on Udechukwu include Beier 1981; Configura 2 1995: Kelly & Stanley 1993; C. Okeke 1995:55-57; C. Okeke 1996, 1998, 1999; Ottenberg 1997:111-53; Azuah 1993; Udechukwu 1993.

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SIMON OTTENBERG is an emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Washington. He curated "The Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group" (National Museum for African Art, 1997) and wrote the companion book, New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997). He is also the author of The Masked Rituals of Afikpo: The Context of an African Art (Henry Art Gallery, 1975).